Colors of Chaos

CLXXIX

LEYLADIN SAT UP in bed, then slipped in the darkness from under the quilt and coverlet to the window, where she peered through a crack in the shutter-out at the heavy fat snowflakes that followed the afternoon’s cold rain, leaving a thin coat of slushy snow on the bushes and the ground.

“There’s something out there,” she whispered.

Cerryl climbed out of the silken sheets, wearing but a loose nightshirt, still groggy. He’d barely gotten to sleep, and deep as his sleep had been, it had not been restful. He shook his head, throbbing from the storm. Despite the pounding in his skull, he could sense something beyond, not exactly chaos, not exactly order.

“A lot of iron…I can feel that,” she added in an even lower voice.

“Iron…weapons.” Cerryl blinked and rubbed his forehead.

Thurummmm…thurrummm…The thunder of the snow shower rumbled across Fairhaven and through Cerryl’s skull as he pulled back the inside shutters and fumbled open the window.

Had there been a muffled yell…a clank of some sort?

Through the heavy flakes of snow, the intermittent glow of the single outside house lamp glinted off dark iron. Figures in dark leathers slipped along the shadows by the wall, and a heavy pounding came from the front of the house.

“Cerryl…there must be twoscore armsmen out there, and…”

And someone mustering chaos. Concentrating was hard, with his sleep-befogged mind and headache. You have to concentrate…you have to…“I know…there’s a pair of mages-I don’t know whom, though.”

“He’s at the window there!” hissed a high male voice.

Cerryl frowned. Despite the headache he began to muster chaos, as much as he could.

Whhhstt! A firebolt flared toward the window, curving away and splatting against the bricks of the wall.

Cerryl swallowed. He hadn’t even sensed the chaos. Leyladin’s shields had diverted it while he’d been fumbling, trying to create a larger chaos focus through the ground and storm.

Leyladin touched his hand lightly, letting her dark order support him, adding to his shields, actually shielding him as he worked. “Go on…You can do it.”

Can you? You have to. Ignoring the two sets of pounding-a heavy hammer against a door and storm-chaos and conflict within his skull-Cerryl struggled to raise the chaos he needed.

Whhhstt! Another chaos bolt flamed toward the window, and again Leyladin diverted it.

Cerryl could feel the strain she was under, trying to deal with chaos and his impossibly slow reactions. His eyes burned, and each of the armsmen in dark leathers seemed to have split into two armsmen.

The ground rumbled, once, twice, and he smiled grimly as the chaos he had called forth infused the area around the house.

Ssssssss! Orange-white flame seared upward through the ground, and steam hissed into being, wreathing the factor’s dwelling. Curtains of black-shot white chaos fire played around the walls and wavered across the ground. Gouts of steam flashed into the dark night air.

“Aeeeii!!..” The screams of men being chaos-roasted filled the night, and the ugly unseen reddish white chaos of death rolled across the ground, swirling against the bricks of the dwelling.

Whhhssst! Whssst! Two more firebolts flashed toward them, and this time Cerryl diverted them, his senses on the two figures that stood, seemingly impossibly, amid the chaos storm that filled the night.

Whhhsst!

The High Wizard straightened, taking a slow breath, and focused a narrower beam of chaos.

The first figure flared like a white candle struck by molten iron. The second turned but did not take three steps before another white candle flared in the darkness.

Cerryl bent forward, his hands on the wooden sill.

Leyladin’s fingers trembled on Cerryl’s forearm, then tightened. “Finish it…”

Cerryl closed his eyes to shut out the painful double images and concentrated on widening the swath of chaos to include those armsmen already retreating, even those trying to scramble over the stone walls.

SSsssssss!

The muscles in his arms and thighs tightened, almost cramping into knots. Outside, the ground steamed, so much that the air felt like a hot and damp summer night, shot through with an occasional brief gust of chill wind.

Leyladin tugged gently at Cerryl’s arm. “There’s no one out there, but the front entry…”

The healer at his side, Cerryl walked heavily but quickly toward the front door, holding some fragments of chaos ready.

A leathered figure leaped across the tiles of the front Hall-almost reaching Cerryl before a golden light lance burned through his chest. Cerryl and Leyladin jumped back as the dull thud and clunk of covered plate mail echoed through the dwelling.

Both glanced around.

“I don’t see anyone else,” she whispered.

Squinting through double images and eyes that stabbed pain, Cerryl swept the hall and foyer with sight and senses but could see no one. They eased toward the open front door and the lamp that spilled faint light across the still-steaming ground.

“There were two running toward the square,” Leyladin said.

“We’ll have to let them go,” he answered hoarsely.

Leyladin bent and studied the body in green livery lying in the front foyer. “Gleddis…he once carried me on his shoulder.”

Cerryl noted the sledge and heavy chisel on the stone stoop, and chunks of wood gouged out of the door frame. “I’m sorry.”

“Lady? Ser?” Soaris padded up behind them, trousers thrown on over a nightshirt but barefoot. “Are you all right?”

“Yes,” Leyladin answered simply. “They killed Gleddis.”

Soaris studied the fallen guard, then peered out into the now-still night, squinting to see beyond the faint semicircle of light thrown by the door lamp. “He saved you, and allowed ser Cerryl to destroy the others.”

None of the armsmen would have been here, except for me. “Sometimes that’s cold comfort.” Cerryl’s words were heavy.

“He would not have died, had he not wished to do his duty.” Soaris studied the ground. As the wind from the storm rose and the ground dried and cooled, white ashes swirled up and mixed with white and fat snowflakes. Farther from the house, the flakes had begun to stick.

Cerryl looked out beyond the doorway, through the double images and the reinforced headache. “Soaris…?”

“Ser?”

“I can see our intruders left some weapons and metal implements. If you would not mind…”

“I would be happy to gather them, ser. If nothing else, ser Layel could resell them at a profit.”

“You should not have any trouble.” Cerryl massaged his forehead above his eyes.

“I would think not, ser.”

“Thank you, Soaris,” Leyladin said softly.

Cerryl walked slowly through the front Hall. His legs barely supported him, and he took several steps into the front sitting room, where he sank into the nearest chair. His eyes were pain-seared, so much so that the images-when he opened his eyes-were doubled and tripled.

“You’ll be all right,” Leyladin said.

“Not…without…you…”

Slowly, as she kneaded his shoulders and neck, the shaking subsided. The double images remained, if not so pain-seared as immediately following his use of focused chaos. His head ached, more than he could recall, perhaps more than ever, or perhaps just more than he wanted to recall.

Soaris passed through the front Hall again, this time wearing boots and a jacket.

“Anya. It was Anya.” Leyladin added, more softly. “I told you she planned something. She’s one of the few that know you don’t handle chaos as well in storms.”

Cerryl refrained from nodding but tightened his lips, thinking about his comments to Anya about a storm only days earlier. “Stupid…”

“You did fine.”

“You can’t let anyone know anything, can you?” This time he did shake his head, if minutely. “For a bit, she’ll have to think we don’t know her connection. Until I can discover whose armsmen those were.”

“She gets away with too much.”

“Not this time,” Cerryl promised, his voice cold and distant. Not this time…but we do it my way.